


How to Bring Someone Back from the Dead

by Anovelle



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Attempt at Humor, Eliot's bitchy pov, M/M, With A Twist, all the same orpheus and eurydice shit we've been crying over for months but like, fucking with plum purchas's character arc cause I fucking said so, inspired by an HGK477 post with the same name, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-06 00:56:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21217901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anovelle/pseuds/Anovelle
Summary: The quarter is in the outermost pocket of the camping bag. Eliot takes it out and zips the bag securely—as securely as it can get when you’re a magician embarking on a quest to resurrect your dead lover (almost lover, but Eliot didn’t let him get that far because Eliot is stupid), the next step of which is jumping into a fairy circle, which is the biggest magical no no of them all. It’s up there with killing gods and making deals with ancient, magical monsters and breaking deals with ancient, magical monsters and bringing people back from the dead.So just another Tuesday then.orthe one where Eliot goes and gets his boy





	How to Bring Someone Back from the Dead

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by this post, by hgk477. I recommend reading the post first, but you do you.  
https://hgk477.tumblr.com/post/187209524924/how-to-bring-someone-back-from-the-dead

Eliot waits until June to set out. When the grief is still fresh and aching but his stitches are not, when Margo can look at him without that telltale stiffness in her lip that says she’s worried even if she won’t. He’s wearing layers, because Margo has insisted but also because they would make Quentin happy. Fashionable layers. But layers nonetheless. And hiking boots. And a fleece-lined overcoat. There’s another one of them in the bag (a fraying, bright orange camping bag that Quentin never used outside of his backyard. It’s hideous. Eliot loves it.), along with a quarter, a white rose, a blanket, a flashlight, extra batteries, a somewhat lucrative amount of food and water, and a glued-together airplane.

Eliot waits until June to set out, when the weather is warm and the grass is springing up, fresh and soft and green. When it reminds him of a ramshackle cottage and Arielle’s grin and Teddy saying ‘Papa,’ for the first time and Quentins’s excellent pout in the background. Until it smells like home. Q would like that too.

Kady’s not there when he leaves. That’s alright. She texted him a straightforward, “good luck. Don’t die,” which, considering their overall lack of one on one interaction, Eliot would say is more than what’s warranted. He texts her back, “thanks.”

Margo scrunches him down and kisses his forehead before he goes, something hard and bright in her eyes despite Fen’s nimble hand on her shoulder.

“Bring him home,” she growls. It’s an order.

“Yes ma’am.” Eliot happily accepts it.

Fen smiles at the both of them, a bit sadder when he squeezes her fingers. But everyone’s a bit sad when they look at him nowadays. He’s come to accept it.

Julia hugs him. It shouldn’t surprise him but it does. Julia always surprises him. And just when he thinks he has her figured out, she turns around and surprises him again. It might be what he likes best about her.

Penny nods from behind her. He’s not one for touching. That’s alright. Julia squishes him enough for two people anyway.

Alice shakes his hand. She’s not good with words, or maybe she’s just not good with Eliot. But she looks him in the eye without gluing her chin to her collarbone or clenching her jaw, and Eliot considers that an improvement. She says “good luck,” and he thinks she might just mean it.

Which is stupid, because if Eliot fails they’re all a tad fucked, really. Doubting Alice’s sincerity is habit at this point though, and if he breaks any more of those he might have to come up with a new personality, and this one works perfectly well as it is. Except for when it doesn’t.

_Except when it’s sitting in front of Quentin, frightened and brittle and desperate and saying _that’s not me and that’s definitely not you—

_Except when it’s shooting a Monster in a castle, like that’s going to save the prince—_

_Except when it wakes up hours too late to do any saving at all but just in time to throw a peach into the fire at a funeral for the one he—_

Eliot sets out.

Eliot sets out in June, but his journey begins in May.

Because in May, there’s a girl sitting at his window in Fillory.

She’s young, a few years younger than him, in that sweet cusp of college. Her hair is auburn and her eyes are hazel. Her attire is black, from her long sweater to her heavy boots. She’s perched on the railing of Eliot’s balcony, easy as anything. He thinks that if he pushed her off she’d just float back on.

She looks at him curiously, her lilting face pulled shrewd and observing. There’s something clever in her eyes and something familiar in her stance, but Eliot wouldn’t be able to say what it was.

“Hello,” she says when he opens the door.

“Hi,” he replies. Perhaps it’s stiff. Perhaps he doesn’t care. It’s hard to care about things when you’re drunk. Or when you’re hungover. Eliot spends most of his time drunk or hungover. It’s not his best habit. But then, nothing about him is his best right now.

He’s working on it.

The girl is still watching him, still shrewd.

“Are you alright?” She says, perhaps because Eliot is stumbling a bit.

“Fine,” he grits out.

The girl shakes her head, and perhaps he’s frustrated her, because then she snaps her fingers and Eliot is suddenly, forcibly sober for the first time since—

Well.

Since.

Anyways. It hurts. Which he guesses it’s supposed to. Still.

“Ow,” he rubs his head pointedly.

She rolls her eyes. There’s something long-suffering about the gesture, like she’s rolled her eyes at him before.

“Please, I only sped you through it.”

But Eliot’s not paying attention, because now he’s sober, and sober means clarity, means remembering, means grief, means—

_Waking up, and Margo is holding his hand and Julia is trembling by the door and Penny is watching her and Kady’s whispering to Alice and Alice is just—sitting there, still, not even her eyes are darting around and something is missing and something is wrong and—_

_“Where’s Quentin?”_

_And Margo crying and Julia falling and Penny catching and Kady going silent and Alice is just. Still._

_And then Eliot’s chest cracks open and he can’t breathe he can’t breathe he can’t—_

“Hey. _Hey. _Eliot. Can you hear me?”

He’s on his balcony. In Fillory. Not at Brakebills. Not in that awful room, being told that awful thing again and again and again and—

He’s on his balcony in Fillory, not that room at Brakebills. He’s on his balcony in Fillory, and he is still sober and Quentin is still dead.

Eliot sort of wants to throw up.

“Eliot?” The girl says again. She’s abandoned the railing. She’s short, he notices, just to give his brain something to do that isn’t missing Quentin, thinking about Quentin. She’s short and she’s got a chin-length flop of auburn hair and a nose that looks like a button and her jaw is still soft with baby fat. There are no wrinkles, not yet, but she’ll probably get them on her forehead judging by the way her eyebrows hop around like the Easter bunny on a trampoline. There’s something familiar about her, about her tight-shouldered stance and the knit of her brow. Eliot can’t put his finger on it. He thinks putting his finger on it might hurt.

“What did you do that for?”

“They told me to make sure you were clear-headed.”

Eliot glares. “You couldn’t have waited a couple more hours?”

“You would’ve gotten drunk again.”

There’s no judgement when she says it, but Eliot’s cheeks burn anyway. The girl either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. She’s too busy with pulling a wrinkled up sheet of parchment out of her sweater and pressing it into his hand.

“What is this?”

“A gift from the old gods.”

Unless Quentin is hiding in there like the worlds thinnest smartphone, Eliot thinks, this is going to be a pretty shit gift. He opens the parchment.

He was right.

“It’s blank.”

“Astute observation,” the girl says.

Now that was judgy.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“I’m just a messenger,” the girl says. But her eyes are twinkling in that particular way Arielle’s did when she’d helped Quentin hide all the purple tiles to force him inside when it was raining.

“If you’d like a spot to read, the lake is lovely this time of night. When the moon is nice and full.”

She give him a significant look. It isn’t subtle.

Arielle had never been subtle either, now that he thinks about it.

“Just something to think about,” he hears her say.

Then she leans back over the balcony and kicks off.

Eliot was wrong. She doesn’t float. She flies.

Eliot sets out in June, when the branches of the forest are dense with leaves and its floor is dense with worms. It’s the same forest Julia burned and brought back again, the same forest they’d lived in and not lived in. There’s a sort of symbolism, Eliot thinks. A sort of comfort.

He walks and walks and walks, until the sun wraps its dying rays around the tree trunks and the stars come out to twinkle cheerily at him, as if saying hello. The moon isn’t full. That’s okay. He’s waiting for darkness.

It’s a long time before he finds it. The stars are reluctant to let him out of their sight, but eventually he loses them to the canopy above. And still Eliot walks. He wishes he could say his thoughts were all Quentin. But at least a quarter were about how his ass hurt a little and his feet hurt a lot.

(At least a quarter were wishing he could complain to Quentin about how his ass hurt a little and his feet hurt a lot).

He doesn’t speak, or sing. He hasn’t got a map. He’s just him, Eliot, heart in his throat, his dead _something’s _old camping bag that never went camping on his shoulder.

He continues on until the moon stops reflecting into the shadows. He doesn’t take his flashlight out. He’s looking for darkness, which might be batshit, because he can’t even see his feet and the next time he trips he might sprain his ankle and then where would they be.

It’s also too dark to read the parchment he has holed up in his breast pocket, but that’s no matter. He memorized it long ago.

He takes another step, then another, and just when the blackness has pressed itself firmly against his eyes, he looks left.

And there it is, the telltale glow flickering between the trees. Light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, and just enough that Eliot can make out the silhouettes of roots the he trips over as he makes his way towards it. As he goes, he thinks _Quentin, Quentin, Q—_

And this next part is important, he knows because ginger Sabrina told him so, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling like an idiot when he clears his throat and says, “I don’t know who’s listening—“

He does know. It’s him and the trees and the silence of the forest, because apparently it gets to have _opinions _about these things.

“—but I’m going to pretend it’s you, Q. Christ, I hope it’s you.”

_Quentin Quentin Quentin—_

“I have to say how much I miss you. But it’s not—I can’t really put it into words, you know?”

—_Quentin Quentin Quentin—_

“If you were here you’d say I was emotionally stunted. You’re right.”

He laughs, and it’s weak, and it sounds like _Quentin Quentin Quentin—_

“I am. I’m bad at feelings. At my feelings but at everyone else’s too. And I’m not—I’m not going to, like, bore you with dumb explanations, because you already know them all anyway.”

Eliot doesn’t know where he’s going with this. He’s getting closer to light, and he keeps thinking _Quentin Quentin Quentin_, and there’s more he wants to say, more he _has_ to say.

“I just—I keep looking for you. Not like I am now, but—I keep looking over my shoulder during meetings, and at the library, and in your room in the cottage, and it’s like—it’s like there’s this moment where I forget you’re gone. Or maybe I’m in, like, deep shit denial. But then I look at all these places you’re supposed to be and you’re not there because you’re fucking dead, and I just—“

_Quentin Quentin Quentin_

“I feel like I’m breaking apart.”

_Quentin Quentin Quentin—_

“Why do I want you back? Fucking hell, Q, because I’m a selfish bastard. Because I—I’ve fucked so much shit between us, the least I can do is give you a second chance at being alive. Because I’m still absolutely terrified of you but holy fucking _shit, _Q, the thought of never seeing you again terrifies me so much more. You are, full stop, the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You, and our life, and our family, okay? You’re tied with _Margo_ for that_._”

_Quentin Quentin Quentin—_

“I want you back because—fuck, Q, I wanted to say this to your face—because I’m in love with you, and I made you think that I wasn’t and I’m _sorry. _Baby, I’m so sorry.”

_Quentin Quentin Quentin—_

“And if you come back—I know it’s your decision. I know you might not want it. I know I might be too late—but Q, if you come back, and you still want that? I swear you wouldn’t even have to ask.”

_Quentin Quentin Quentin—_

“So please, baby. Please just. Come back to me.”

The glow is right in front of him now, and Eliot is out of words. It’s all just _Quentin Quentin Quentin, _not a single thought spared for his ass or his feet.

And then, just as suddenly as it appeared, it’s gone, and Eliot is alone in the dark, his eyes wet and his throat dry and a peculiar, rough hollowness in his chest, as if someone had scraped his heart out with sandpaper. But the darkness isn’t so insistent now, and so he pulls out his flashlight.

He manages to turn it on before he sits—falls, really—onto a springy patch of grass that definitely wasn’t there before; the sort of patch that Alice would narrow her eyes at and Julia would curiously poke, the kind Margo would ignore until the right moment, and the kind Eliot will, apparently, thoughtlessly collapse onto.

Perhaps not thoughtlessly. But trustingly.

The forest is meant to be on his side by this point anyways. What with its’ _opinions _on these things.

He places (drops) the flashlight next to him, and the hollow feeling drags his eyes shut, pulls him under better than any pill, and it’s not until he’s dangling on that precise edge between wakefulness and slumber that he realizes he hasn’t stopped whispering Quentin’s name.

_Quentin Quentin Quentin—_

“Quentin Quentin Quentin…”

The girl is there when he goes to the lake. Same hair and witchy attire, except now her sleeves are rolled up to her elbows. She’s pacing in midair. Because apparently she can just. Pace. In midair.

Showoff.

“Hey!”

Showoff spots him. Eliot half expects her to tell him off for being late.

She beckons him forward instead, the tip toes of her boots sinking toward the rocky shelf. It’s a strangely graceful landing. She looks like she might drop into a plié.

Again Eliot says: showoff.

“Did you bring it with you?”

And for the first time Eliot considers that she might be just as curious about the well-worn parchment she’d handed him as he is.

“Yes.”

“Good,” she bounces back on her toes, looking, for the life of her, like she might fly away. Which is possible.

“Good,” she repeats. Then she shoves him. “Go on! Tell me what it says.”

Eliot narrows his eyes. “Why would I do that?”

“Helped you find this place didn’t I?”

“Find this—I found it! You probably. Followed me here. Or something.”

“Maybe I just knew where you’d be.”

She taps the side of her nose, conspiratorial.

Eliot does not sigh, and he does not curse, but sweet _Ember _does he want to.

Instead he huffs. Huffily. To make sure this unwanted hangover cure knows exactly where she stands with him.

Said unwanted hangover cure isn’t paying attention. She’s flying low, sweeping circles around the clearing, like a geriatric swimmer taking up the one good lane at the community pool.

Whatever.

“Why are you even here?”

He has to shout, which he hates. Kings shouldn’t have to shout. Even deposed kings with enough grief to topple a city with.

The girl dips down low, hangs upside down in front of him, like Spiderman but with Mary Jane’s hair. Or maybe a rule 64 Peter Pan.

“Curiosity.”

Then she spins in midair, a clever smile looping as widely as she flies, and Eliot realizes that actually, she’s the Cheshire Cat.

“Why?”

“Because the gods sent me to find _you. _Not the King, or the niffin, or the godling, or even the Traveler. _You. _And like, I understand that you were possessed by the Monster, but—“

“Why thank me if I didn’t do any of the heavy lifting?”

Eliot had been wondering that himself.

“Your words not mine,” she shrugs. She’s still floating, her legs kicking up behind her.

“So then I got to thinking,” she goes on, “maybe it’s not the paper that’s the gift. Maybe it’s something else. Something you all want.”

_Quentin, _Eliot thinks automatically.

“But still, why you?”

Apparently ginger Sabrina isn’t done.

“Why drop it into your hands? Unless it’s not as straightforward as that.”

“Because gods forbid that the gods are straightforward,” Eliot mutters. Ginger Sabrina lets out a surprised little snort.

“So,” she floats closer.

“So?”

“Open it.”

He does.

It isn’t blank anymore. Now it’s covered in scrawly, spidery cursive, the kind that you’d see in a very old, once very vogue, spell book. At the top of the parchment, there is a title.

_How to Bring Someone Back from the Dead_

Eliot doesn’t know if he smiles or cries.

The sun is shining when he wakes. The flashlight is still on, dimmer than it was before. Maybe it’s a trick of the daylight. More likely it’s the batteries he’s not allowed to replace yet.

The parchment is still tucked in his pocket, next to his heart. He takes it out, rereads it once, twice, three times as he tuts the morning breath and night grease away and pretends the feeling of being suddenly, magically clean doesn’t remind him of waking up to a hospital room in a school in a world in a universe without Quentin.

He turns the flashlight off and puts it back in Quentin’s camping bag. It’s no less frayed or garishly orange than it was the night before, only now Eliot can see it better. It really is so genuinely fucking ugly. Eliot hugs it to his chest like it’s his most prized waistcoat.

There’s a fairy ring, about a foot away from where he slept, that wasn’t there the night before. There’s nothing incredibly special about this particular fairy ring, except that it’s the most special thing Eliot has ever seen. He checks the parchment that he’s already memorized once more.

Yes. This is good.

He eats as he’s instructed, and purposefully doesn’t give thought to who might be instructing him. The rest of the food and water he places at his feet. He’s half-tempted to cast a protection charm to ward away any hungry woodland creatures, but instinct tells him _no._ _Leave it. Trust the parchment._

The quarter is in the outermost pocket of the camping bag. Eliot takes it out and zips the bag securely—as securely as it can get when you’re a magician embarking on a quest to resurrect your dead lover (almost lover, but Eliot didn’t let him get that far because Eliot is _stupid)_, the next step of which is jumping into a fairy circle, which is the biggest magical no no of them all. It’s up there with killing gods and making deals with ancient, magical monsters and _breaking_ deals with ancient, magical monsters and bringing people back from the dead.

So just another Tuesday then.

Eliot steps into the circle and places the quarter on the ground, tails up.

“Quentin,” he says, before he can overthink it and change it to heads, “I’m coming for you.”

The quarter sinks into the ground.

Eliot’s breath hitches.

This is it. It’s time.

He pulls his jacket tighter around himself.

Last chance to check the parchment.

_No, _he shakes his head. He knows what he’s doing. He closes his eyes and imagines sinking like the quarter. He doesn’t feel the ground soften and stretch beneath him, and he doesn’t open his eyes. Not even when the dirt tickles his nose and threatens to suffocate him, not when a worm worries at the seam of him lips that he keeps firmly shut. Not until he smells smoke.

He’s in a tunnel. A long tunnel. It stretches so far he can’t see the end. Part of him wants to shout, to see how it will echo. But that part of him is as stupid as the one who thought they should have left Quentin, so he tells it to shut up.

It’s dim here, but that will change, Eliot knows. He read.

So he retrieves the flashlight, replaces the batteries on autopilot.

It will be dark soon. No time to waste.

Eliot walks.

The girl is rereading the parchment for what feels like the third time. Eliot’s pacing. On the ground. Like a fucking normie.

“Are you done yet?” He says.

“If you don’t want my help, you can just say so,” she says.

“I don’t want your help.”

“Liar.”

Eliot is annoyingly proud of himself for not bashing his head against a rock.

“I didn’t ask you to be here,” he growls.

“But you need me. So there.”

He wants to fucking sob.

_“Why _are you doing this? And don’t give me that curiosity bullshit, I know that it’s—“

She cocks one of her energetic eyebrows, watching him fish around for abetter word than—

“Bullshit.”

The girl doesn’t laugh at him outright, so. Small mercies. Better yet, she answers.

“Maybe I’m a bit invested in you. The first step is complete by the way.”

“What--“ he splutters. “How—“

The girl produces a book from some hidden pocket. Or maybe summons it. Eliot doesn’t care when he sees the title.

“That’s—“

“Quentin’s book, yes. Don’t worry, I skipped over the more. Um. Personal things.”

She’s blushing. The messenger of the gods is really blushing. Eliot doesn’t know whether to be amused or mortified, because—

“You read his book?”

“All your books. It’s. Um. Special. Special privileges.”

Eliot’s eyes narrow.

“Why?”

“Not important. But his book, it’s. Not done. There are still pages.”

Eliot just stares at her. And stares and stares and stares.

“They’re blank,” she supplies. “But they’re still. There. Waiting for more story. So. Yeah. Making sure it wasn’t his time. Check.”

And Eliot stares on, stares at the auburn hair and the lilting face and the familiar stance—round shouldered, head tucked down, hand fluttering up to tuck a strand behind her ears as if to say _I’m not hiding, I’m not hiding, I’m not—_

“Who _are _you?”

She smiles and that’s familiar too; the awkward quirk of it, the way her eyes only brighten by a smidge. She doesn’t say anything, just holds out the parchment, and Eliot notices for the first time that she has a tattoo. An intricate little clock tucked into the crook of her elbow.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she says.

And then she’s gone, and Eliot is alone with the parchment and the faint tinkle of snorting laughter on the wind.

Eliot doesn’t know how far he’s gone. His ass hurts again. The bruising drum of _Quentin Quentin Quentin _has subsided to a tender ache.

Eliot sort of wishes for the bruising back. It made the time go faster.

Then, suddenly, in the middle of the tunnel, there’s a house.

It’s tiny, and ramshackle, and _oh so familiar _that it burns at Eliot’s sternum to look at it, at the paint-chipped Z-bar on the door, at the yard that isn’t a yard, where no mosaic pieces lay, where no toddler toddles because it’s only dirt and mold and cold decay. But Eliot—

Eliot wants to run inside and see if everything was where he left it.

He doesn’t do that. He does as the parchment says, and knocks on the door.

It opens.

She’s—

Her hair isn’t auburn. Or maybe it is, but the light makes it dark. Her eyes swirl strangely, not quite hazel like before. But it’s the same girl. The same face. The same easter-bunny eyebrows.

Eliot doesn’t stare this time. The parchment says not to.

“Don’t get shy on me, Waugh,” she says. “Now. Something pretty please.”

And Eliot—for the life of him—Eliot snorts. He snorts until he laughs, until she has to fish the white rose of of the camping bag herself and bat him on the nose with it and drag him inside. And he laughs a little more after that too.

She’s kept the place up, even if it’s just an Underworld copy of the place. She offers him food she knows he won’t eat, and bites down in the inside of her cheek when he refuses.

“I know you can’t,” she explains. “But I have to stick to the script.”

And what an odd script it is, being hosted in his own home. They talk for awhile, exchanging stories. He finds out her name is Plum, and it sends something jagged sparking down his throat. If she notices, she’s kind enough to ignore it.

She doesn’t talk about the house, and he doesn’t ask. He finds out that she’s a witch, a hedge, with a penchant for flight and clock tattoos.

“It’s for my mother.”

“Your mother?”

Eliot thought her mother disappeared when she was young.

“Adoptive. She, um—“ Plum lets out a little laugh— “she had a sort of penchant for clocks.”

“She liked timekeeping?”

Plum snorts, short and ugly and oh so familiar, but Eliot still can’t place it. She snorts like it’s a joke, one that Eliot’s not quite privy to.

“Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

In exchange, Eliot tells her about Indiana and Brakebills and meeting Margo, about reinventing himself the second he was out of his father’s reach. It’s easy to talk to her about these things, these old wounds. It’s like telling Teddy about them, once upon a time, the firelight reflected in his big brown eyes—Quentin’s eyes—as he laughed and said, “More, papa, more.”

Plum reminds him of Teddy, almost, except that she doesn’t because she can’t.

It’s not until later, when the fire has died down and they’ve both toed off their shoes, that she says, “You want to ask me about the house.”

“Yes,” Eliot says. They’re curled up in their chairs like children at a slumber party, willing to scrunch if it means they don’t have to sleep on the floor.

“Go on, then.” Her eyes aren’t swirling so much now. Her hair isn’t so dark.

“Ask.”

Eliot breathes.

“Why do you live in this house?”

Plum shrugs. “It’s where I grew up.”

Eliot’s breath catches, chokes, keeps trundling along in and out of his lungs.

“It was my grandmother’s,” she continues. She’s wringing her fingers. “She inherited it from her mother, who got it from her father, who got it from his father.”

She’s eyeing him very carefully when she says the next part.

“From his _fathers.”_

And she’s implying something, something that’s impossible, but Eliot can’t stop noticing all the familiar things about her. The shade of her hair, the dimple at the corner of her mouth, the hazel of her eyes, the way her hand comes up to tuck her hair behind her ear, _I’m not hiding I’m not hiding, I’m not—_

“Do you remember that old Fillorian tradition of naming kids after plants?” She says.

Her eyes look like Teddy’s wife’s, he realizes.

“There was one that you named them after the family business,” he counters.

Her hair is Arielle’s.

“Well,” she snorts, short and ugly and _Quentin— _“Guess who got the best of both worlds?”

—and so is the dimple and so are those tucking hands and that upturned nose.

“Peaches and plums,” he whispers. _“Plum.”_

She smiles. It’s watery.

“Hi granddad.”

He hugs her for—he doesn’t even know how long. Her shoulders feel like Arielle’s—slim and fragile as a bird, but the way she shoves at him when she’s had enough is Teddy. Or maybe it’s all young 20-somethings. Eliot doesn’t care.

_Plum._

When she smiles it’s all Quentin.

“Explain,” he gestures to the house, but he means _explain you. _She does.

Because apparently, remembering a life you never lived doesn’t make it real in the grand scheme of the universe and history and the children you left behind. What makes it real is this—a girl who never should have existed with a clock tattooed on her arm and another two years of service left in her contract with Hades or the Library or both. A girl who’s lived in a replica of the house she grew up in for 2,998 years now, who itches to see the real thing again. Someday. A girl whose first mother disappeared and whose second mother died, a girl who’s seen so much but never anything important, not really, not until—

100 years ago, when she picked up a book, and saw her family begin.

“I watched you. Well, I read about you,” she holds something out to him. A book.

_Quentin._

“Special privileges,” she says, sheepish. And—of course. Family privileges.

“Can I—?”

“You can read it,” she says. “In fact, keep it for awhile.”

She smiles, sad and still Quentin, and Eliot understands.

“Thank you.”

He takes it. The binding is worn to softness, maybe because of how long Plum has had it but maybe because that’s what Quentin is—soft and comfortable and kind. Maybe that projects onto his book.

“You should go,” Plum tells him. Her eyes have stopped swirling now. The smile is still there, hanging on by a fraying thread, and Eliot nods. Hugs her again.

“When you come back, find us,” he says, and waits to feel her chin stab at his shoulder when she nods before he lets go.

“Goodbye Plum.”

She smiles. Sad. Quentin.

“Goodbye granddad.”

Eliot walks. He doesn’t let his thoughts swirl to Plum. He doesn’t let his heart shudder at the house and the contract and the 3,000 years she’s missed and hasn’t missed at all, because time works differently here, and she’ll come back changed to a world that hasn’t moved an inch.

_Come find us, _he’d said. He resolutely does not wonder when that will be.

It’s hours and hours like this, one foot, then the other, the ache in his chest that feels like _Quentin _guiding him forward and forward and forward. He keeps Quentin’s book tucked near his heart and doesn’t read a word, just run his fingers blind over the pages, soaks up the inherent _Quentinness _lying there. Hours and hours, until he’s stumbling more than he’s stepping and sleeping when he does.

So he stops. Sleeps for as long as he can with the cold bearing down on his limbs. And when he wakes, he walks. Rinse and repeat.

There’s food in his bag that wasn’t there before—meats and cheeses and Fillorian wine. Eliot doesn’t touch it.

Then finally, finally, he reaches a river. And there, on it’s bank—

“Trade ya.”

—Plum.

He returns the book and takes the flower, and then there’s a boat. Plum holds it steady as he clambers in, gives him a moment to readjust his pack and stare at her one last time.

“Two years, you said?”

“Maybe not for you.”

And then she pushes him off.

They already said goodbye. No reason to get repetitive. But Eliot watches her as she shrinks, catalogues Arielle’s hair and Quentin’s dimples and Maria’s eyes. Notices Teddy’s jawline and something else, something that might just be _him _in the bunny-hop of her eyebrows. He memorizes her as best he can, standing on a dark and rocky shore, her shoulders hunched and her hand raised and Quentin’s book clutched to her side.

_Two years, you said?_

_Maybe not for you._

And then the fog swallows her up, and there’s nothing for Eliot to do but wait.

He sleeps. He must sleep. Because one moment he’s looking through the fog and the next the boat has knocked against something. Another shore, perhaps. Eliot doesn’t know, he can’t see it because of all this Mother. Fucking. Fog.

He stands anyway, and hopes that he’s not climbing onto the back of some horrible river monster when he steps off the boat, careful not to touch the water. But no, the ground beneath his feet crunches like gravel. Better yet, the fog lessens, and Eliot can walk again. So he does.

A mile in, maybe two, and the air is clear but the land is crowded with people. Dead people, Eliot knows, except that they don’t look dead. They just look like. People. Regular, warm-blooded people that breathe and talk and laugh. And perhaps Eliot would believe they were, except that they’re so incredibly, horribly silent.

That’s what scares Eliot the most. The silence. The gape-mouthed stillness of it all. The way these people aren’t just dead in their bodies but dead in their hearts and their minds, moving mindless like jellyfish. He wonders briefly, joltingly, if he will find Quentin the same way. Then wonders how he wouldn’t.

_No. _He can’t do this now. Not when there’s still so far to go. So Eliot does what he’s done since the beginning of this godforsaken journey—he walks.

He walks and walks and walks, forces himself to look into the many quiet, mindless faces for the one he’s searching for. As he goes, he hums. It’s something he used to sing Teddy on the nights neither of them could sleep, something Eliot hasn’t let himself think about in moths or years, depending on where you stood. But it’s automatic and its comforting and it takes the edge off of this dreadful task better than anything else could. And so Eliot hums. He hums until his throat is hoarse and scratchy, until it feels like he’s walked every corner of this endless fucking plain. And then—

And then—

And then—

He looks and it’s—

Floppy hair, shorter than he remembers, and brown eyes, and a dimple he saw just a little while ago on a different face and it’s all—

_Quentin Quentin Quentin._

Something in Eliot’s chest stops and starts again. Because yes, it’s Quentin, but he’s blank and unseeing and when he looks at Eliot there’s—nothing. Eliot _aches._

“Hello,” he says anyway, because his heart is wretched and hopeful and so wrapped up in Quentin that he will still try, of course he will still try, and he understands, for the first time, why Hades sent Plum to _him_. Because no one is as desperate for Quentin’s life as he is. No one else would keep scratching and kicking and fighting, long after there’s nothing to fight for.

“Hi,” Quentin says back, and Eliot sort of wants to cry.

“How-how are you?”

Quentin frowns. Thinks about it. And it might be stupid, might be so stupid, but Eliot’s heart beats with each of those tiny movements. With the wonder that is _Quentin, _in front of him, emoting.

“I’m alright,” he decides. “Bored, I guess.”

And there’s his old sheepishness in the way he tucks the hair he doesn’t have behind his ear, _I’m not hiding I’m not hiding I’m not hiding_. Eliot does cry then, silent as any of the souls around them, because _oh. Hello there. I’ve missed you. Missed you so._

Quentin’s mouth falls open then, and he whispers, “You’re alive, aren’t you?”

_Barely, _Eliot thinks.

“Yes,” he says.

And then something sparks and then there are—

Questions. So many questions.

“What does ice cream taste like? I sort of remember it being good but—“

“Are libraries really as big as I remember? Because—“

“I think I used to be someone important. Well, sort of important. God, what makes a person important up there anyway? Down here we’re all just—“

“Was there—was there magic up there? Was there color?”

And Eliot answers and answers and answers, caught up in the way Quentin looks _alive _now like he hadn’t before, in how he uses his hands when he speaks, in how he smiles or frowns with each of Eliot’s remarks.

Then the questions run out, or at least pause. Quentin’s brow has a furrow that means he’s thinking of more. And it’s then that Eliot realizes he’s shivering.

“Are you cold?”

Quentin looks a bit surprised, but he says, “Yes.” Like he’s just realizing it himself.

Eliot drops the camping bag, and takes his coat off in favor of draping it over Quentin’s shoulders. He doesn’t touch him, not really. Just secures the collar, makes sure it’s covering his neck. Quentin always complains about his neck getting cold. He doesn’t meet Quentin’s eyes, doesn’t think he can stand to see that confused little frown he always wears when someone does something kind for him.

When Eliot’s finished, he takes takes the other coat out of the bag and puts that on instead.

“Do we—“

Quentin breaks off.

Eliot was right. He’s got the frown.

“Do we know each other?”

_50 years—_

_Peaches and plums motherfucker—_

_Proof of concept—_

“Yes,” Eliot says, his eyes burning and his breathe scraping his lungs. Then.

“Your name is Quentin.”

_I call you Q._

“Quentin,” he whispers, and smiles like he’s been given a gift, and there’s nothing Eliot wants more than to crush him against his chest and carry him out of here, up up up into the world of the living. But no, not yet. There are rules to this. There are steps he has to take.

So instead, he digs into the bag and pulls out the glued-together airplane.

“I brought this for you,” he says. Gives it to him. Quentin’s mouth parts into a little ‘o’ of surprise as he twists it in his hands. Then he looks at Eliot, eyes alight and alive, and says, _“Thank you.”_

Eliot nods. Doesn’t say _you’re welcome _or _I’m sorry _or _I love you and it’s okay if you don’t love me anymore _or anything he really wants to. Except for—

“My name’s Eliot.”

Quentin watches him curiously, no spark of recognition at his name. That’s okay.

“Do you want to get out of here?” He says, almost afraid of the answer.

But Quentin—

Quentin—

Quentin nods.

And for the first time since waking up in the Brakebills infirmary, Eliot breathes.

The walk back is easier than the walk to Quentin. Eliot’s not searching anymore. He keeps Quentin’s hand in his, and doesn’t mind that it’s cold and soft to the point of squishiness. Instead, he focuses on Q’s weak grip that he’s returning, and smiles.  
When he reaches the river, Plum is there again, just like he thought she might be. He gives her the rose. She gives him the book.

“What does ‘maybe not for you’ mean?”

She laughs.

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

She’s unfazed by Quentin at his side. Mostly unfazed. Eliot thinks he sees her eyes shine a little brighter in the dark, but that might just be because they’re swirling again.

They get in the boat. She shoves them off. He doesn’t ask how she’ll get home. He trusts her to take care of it herself.

Eliot doesn’t sleep this time, not with Quentin’s hand pressed so tightly to his own. He watches him instead, watches his chest move like it’s remembering being alive. He watches him until they reach the opposite shore, and they have to get out.

And then they walk.

Quentin lags a bit, feet dragging like Teddy’s used to when they had to travel for a long time. Eliot readjusts his grip on his hand and tugs him along. Ignores the rumble of his stomach and does not think of the food in his bag. Instead he thinks of Quentin beside him, and without realizing it, begins to speak.

He talks about Margo, and Fillory, and Fen, and how the two of them had finally managed to get their shit together and just bone. He tells Quentin about Julia, about how she’s rediscovering her magic, about how Penny (“New Penny, not old Penny, but you’ll remember soon Q”) watches her back. About how she won’t let it go beyond that. About Kady and the hedges, about Alice and the Library. It’s odd, he thinks, that Q’s only been gone (he doesn’t say dead) for a few months, and yet everything’s been flipped around since then.

Quentin doesn’t respond. He walks, and lags, and drags his feet, and Eliot pretends not to notice because if he notices his heart might crack in two.

And then Quentin trips, and Eliot can’t pretend anymore.

He doesn’t take Eliot down with him, but Eliot refuses to let go of his hand anyways as he helps him sit up.

“Hey,” he says, “Hey, you’re okay.”  
And Quentin is—

Quentin is crying—heart-wrenching, exhausted sobs, and Eliot can’t, he won’t—

He tucks Quentin’s face against his neck and holds him, lets him let it out as he rubs hands that he hopes are soothing up and down his still back.

“I’ve got you, Q,” he whispers. “I’ve got you. It’ll be alright. I’m right here.”

_“El—“ _Quentin chokes out, and this is too much, it really is. It’s cruel to ask him—to ask either of them—to do this. But there’s no other way.

And so Eliot waits until Quentin goes still against his side, and then a while longer, before he pulls back. Cups Quentin’s cheeks. Ignores how Quentin sinks into it.

“Hey,” he whispers. “I’m gonna carry you, okay? No, no—“ he hushes Quentin’s protests— “It’s alright. I want to.”

And he does. Because maybe then, Quentin will be able to rest, and Eliot will be able to breathe.

“Ready?” He stands, and lifts him, and it’s easy. Quentin is light and pale and still as the grave. Eliot ignores all of this, because it’s Quentin.

He goes back to talking about Alice and the Library. Quentin says nothing, but every so often he head will bump Eliot’s shoulder in a way that makes him think he must be listening.

Minutes or hours later, Eliot sees Plum’s little house.

“Almost there, baby,” he whispers. Quentin just groans.

“Hey, you see that house?”

He cracks an eye open to look.

“That was our house once.”

And then it’s the Mosaic and Teddy and Arielle, and Plum herself, living in this little hut underground so that her family could keep living.

“She’s brave,” Eliot says. “Reminds me of someone I know.”

He talks and talks and talks, and doesn’t notice a thing except the ground under his feet and Quentin in his arms until he does.

Something is watching them.

Eliot doesn’t turn around. Doesn’t even glance back. Pretends that it’s just Plum, keeping an eye on them from her window. He doesn’t need to be afraid of Plum.

He realizes he’s stopped talking, but he can’t quite bring his mouth to open.

So instead, he hums Teddy’s lullaby, and doesn’t turn around.

He doesn’t turn around, he doesn’t turn around, he doesn’t turn around. He notices that Quentin is shivering, and he has to stop to wrap him in a blanket. And even then, he doesn’t turn around.

And then—

There’s a light up ahead.

“Almost there, baby,” Eliot repeats, and he breaks into a run. He almost doesn’t care that he’s jostling Q, except that he does, and he keeps whispering “sorry, sorry, sorry,” until they reach it and then there’s a rush and a drop and—

Eliot steps out of the fairy circle, daylight on his back and Quentin, coughing and suddenly heavy in his arms.

He puts Quentin on the ground.

“Breathe,” he says. “That’s it. In and out, in and out.”

“El?”

And _oh. _Those eyes. Bright and alive and staring, staring, _knowing_ like they hadn’t before. He reaches out, traces the curve of Eliot’s cheek with trembling fingers.

“Eliot?”

He’s crying, he _must _be crying, there’s no way in hell he’s not crying because this, _this, _this is so much more than he expected; Q, looking at him, remembering him.

_“Q,”_ he whispers, and it’s broken, and it’s wretched, and it’s the most honest thing Eliot has ever said in his life. He cups the hand that’s bracing his cheek, runs his thumb down to find the pulse.

He would stay here, he would, just touching Q’s wrist and staring into his eyes for as long as the gods would let him, but there’s more, there are more steps, there’s more to be done and Q is—

“You must be hungry—“

“El wait—“

Quentin keeps him there with nothing but the gentlest press to Eliot’s cheekbone, the smallest tic to say what he wants, and Eliot gives it to him he would give it all to him, he doesn’t even have to ask.

He does though. He licks his (flushed, pink, _alive) _lips, and tucks his hair behind his ear, and asks, “Did you mean it?”

Eliot frowns. “Did I mean what?”  
There’s food and water right beside them, and if Eliot’s stomach is aching he can only imagine Quentin’s, but Quentin doesn’t move. He searches Eliot’s gaze, and Eliot tries to open it as much as possible. _Whatever you’re looking for, it’s yours. Take it._

“I heard you. Before. I just didn’t—I couldn’t remember. That it was you.”

_I’m in love with you, and I made you think that I wasn’t and I’m _sorry_._

“Oh,” Eliot quietly realizes.

“It’s okay if you didn’t,” Quentin scrambles. “I mean, you just brought me back to life so like—"

Eliot shakes his head, and nearly—_nearly—_laughs. Because that’s just so Q, isn’t it? Two seconds back in the land of the living and he’s already trying to give Eliot an out.

“I meant it,” he murmurs, and Quentin goes still, hand falling from his hair. "I swear to Umber, Q. I meant every word. I—_all of it, _Q."

“Oh,” Quentin says.

His hand is still on Eliot’s cheek, and Eliot’s still thumbing his wrist, and gods, gods, Ember and Umber and Iris and the rest, Eliot wants to pull him in, wants to fit their mouths together and just _be, _except with Quentin’s tongue sliding against his own, but he won’t. He won’t.

"It's alright if you don't feel the same," Eliot whispers. Loosens his grip on Quentin's wrist.

He won’t make this decision for Q. Not like he did before.

But—

But when Quentin slides forward, when his lips touch at Eliot’s, softly, gently, when his hands splay at Eliot’s shaking ribs, he responds in kind. Grips the back of Quentin’s neck like he always has, traces his jaw, _sighs, _because yes. This is it. This is what he’s wanted since he escaped from his shitty mind tomb, since he got an eyeful of Quentin’s face, bright and hopeful, what he’s been convinced he’d never get again since he woke up in the Brakebills infirmary. Quentin is _here, _he's here and he's alive and he's beautiful and he's somehow, miraculously, pressed against Eliot like he never intends to move away. That's alright, Eliot doesn't really want him to either.

_Keep kissing me, _he thinks brokenly. _Just leave me here, I'll wait. You can go and live and be yourself and I'll stay here and wait for you to come back and keep kissing me this way. _

_I think I could die like this, _he thinks next.

But Quentin has to breathe eventually. He pulls back, brown eyes warm and soft and light, pulls back just for a second before he's leaning back to press his forehead to Eliot's. Leaning back to say, "I mean it too."

It takes Eliot a second to understand what he means, but when he does he's grinning, laughing into Quentin's mouth, peppering little kisses across his cheeks as Quentin grins, as he tangles his fingers in Eliot's hair.

He says it then, sitting on his knees just outside the fairy ring. Says it over and over, presses it into Quentin's jaw and his neck.

_I love you I love you I love you._

He says it and suddenly it doesn't matter that he's starving, or that he's aching, or that his ass still hurts, or that they're almost definitely doing to fuck on the forest floor and no, that's not the most sanitary or sexy thing they've ever done. None of it fucking matters except for this:

That Quentin smiles. And he says it back.


End file.
